Archive for August, 2014

It’s wacky. It’s eccentric. It’s funny. It’s touching. It’s informative. It’s the fifteen year romance of Mumble Tawny and the English author Martin Windrow as told by him two decades later in The Owl Who Liked Sitting on Caesar: Living with a Tawny Owl. Reflecting on my lifetime of reading I wish I had kept as a library collection all the bird books I have read because it would be a delight to find space among them for this one.

The English are, well they are what they are, so it was comfortable to fall into his telling of their life together, he and Mumble; and to accept the proposition that a successful author and editor would cheerfully clean up bird poop for so long in order to have an alert, expectant, dependent, independent, expressive, and often inscrutable companion to come home to every evening without fail. Not all lovers are so rewarding, and loyal in a caged sort of way.

Whether you are into birds, lovers, or perhaps both, you will find this book is far more enjoyable than reading about the royals, who seem to be feathers in search of a bird. Charles Marlin